From BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3:
In celebration of Wole Soyinka's 80th birthday, a drama based on a real event in 1940s Nigeria. A colonial district officer intervenes to prevent a local man committing ritual suicide

Death And The King's Horseman is considered to be Professor Soyinka's greatest play. In awarding Soyinka the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the Swedish Academy drew special attention to Death and the King's Horseman as evidence of his talent for combining Yoruban and European culture into a unique kind of poetic drama.

Composer and Musical director, Juwon Ogungbe.

Wow. On the surface, this drama seems to be about a power struggle between colonial powers and African natives. But it’s so much deeper than just that simplistic view of history. Soyinka is a powerful writer. Read this drama, you will not regret it.

Another one of my favorites from African Lit. A play; a beautiful play.

An interesting play with choruses that remind me of a Greek play.

This play showcases how the colonizers impose their authority to destruct other's native costume without understanding the root. The characters Pilkings and his wife Jane are attributed colonizing spirits who do neglect how millions and millions of people die in war forwarded by them. But, they attempt to terminate the death ritual defining it as Barbaric Costume in other's country . Consequently, their interference has summoned the ominous destruction in the play. Really an influential play.....

This is perhaps Soyinka's best play, and certainly his most influential; the work cited by the Nobel Committee in awarding the 1986 prize, it has become a classic in African Literature. It is based on an actual event, which occurred in 1946, although Soyinka has backdated it a couple years to the middle of World War II and made other changes in the interests of a more effective drama. The plot concerns a man, the King's Horseman, whose duty is to die to accompany the King of Oyo to the underworld. The play deals with themes of metaphysics, ethics, psychology, and colonialism; as the articles in this Norton edition show, it has been very controversial from the beginning; and whether or not one agrees with Soyinka's views (or however one understands them), the questions he asks are important ones for modern "post-colonial" societies such as Nigeria.

This Norton edition, besides the text of Soyinka's play, also includes the complete translation of the play's immediate source, the Yoruba language play Oba Waja (The King Is Dead) by Duro Ladipo (Soyinka makes much more of the idea; much like Shakespeare's relation to his sources), and a number of critical and background articles; these were the first things I've read about Soyinka and cast some light on his project and so on the plays and poems I've already read as well as this one. The critics all agree that the play is a masterpiece of language and style; some compare it to Shakespeare, others I think with more reason to the Greek tragedies (Soyinka was a serious student of Greek literature, and a graduate student of Shakespearian scholar Wilson Knight.) On the politics of the play, there is more disagreement; some Marxist scholars considered it reactionary while others defended it; Soyinka downplays the political aspects of the play to consider it as a play about death and metaphysics. I was interested to learn that Soyinka is a leading political activist who deliberately tries to exclude explicit politics from his more serious plays and fiction (due to his "ritual" concept of the nature of art), while also writing very political nonfiction and satiric plays.

Quick interesting drama about history and culture I know little about, but the language and style had me confused to the point that it was only after reading summaries of what I read, did I get the whole story.

The King is dead and his horseman (Elesin) must commit death to ease his arrival into the afterlife. The Elesin suicide is a duty to be performed to usher in a state of general wellness and fecundity for his people.

Suicide as most people know must come from within oneself. Perhaps, such resolve takes more than intense physical pain or an overwhelming sense of communal duty to actualise. The Elesin has known from cradle his unfortunate destiny and as such is expected to unwaveringly embark on it. Fidgeting is not expected on the front lines. He must go valiantly. To fail to do so is to loose his identity. Who wouldn't yield under the weight of all these?

As Soyinka warns, the guiless can be tempted to tie the story unevenly as a 'clash of cultures'. Yet, for communal well being and continuity, a sacrifice of death is an ever present occurrence. In this sense, the problem is not limited to Oyo, it is universal.

Without conscious effort to evaluate and honestly lay bare the lofty foundations on which we doggedly stand, there can be no hope for change, no escape, only a slow but sure fall. Soyinka in this tragedy, duly drives home this point.

A VERY interesting look at differing attitudes towards life and death.

Death and the King's Horseman tells the story of a man who wants to stay in the realm of the living when he already belongs to the realm of the dead. The results are tragic for himself and for his nation. Bravo to Simon Gikandi, editor of the Norton Critical Edition that I read. His outstanding selection of analytical and expository articles enabled me to properly appreciate Soyinka's brilliant play. The text is dense. The characters are all clearly drawn and the dialogues are superb. The play rigorously adheres to the Aristotelian model while eloquently pleading for Yoruba Cosmology. Death and the King's Horseman is a masterpiece of twentieth century theatre.

n  Not I became the answering-name
Of the restless bird, that little one
Whom Death found nesting in the leaves
When whisper of his coming ran
Before him on the wind.
Not I has long abandoned home.
This same dawn I heard him twitter in the gods' abode.
Ah, companions of this living world
What a thing this is, that even those
We call immortal Should fear to die.n  
n

It is based on a true incident and has in its roots, a Yoruba tradition that death of a chief must be followed by ritual suicide of the chief’s horseman because horseman’s spirit is essential for helping the chief’s spirit to ascend to other world (or it shall wander the Earth and harm people.) I think this explains the title. The king is dead and, Elsin, his horse-man is more than willing to kill himself. He feels duty bound to it – and would rather die than have his honor questioned:

n  
n  Life has an end. A life that will outlive
Fame and friendship begs another name.
What elder takes his tongue to his plate,
Licks it clean of every crumb? He will encounter
Silence when he calls on children to fulfill
The smallest errand ! Life is honour.
It ends when honour ends.n  
n

Of course, I don’t subscribe to this view. Sometimes, I think the best way to make people do something stupid is to either tell them that gods asked them to do so or make them look at the thing as ‘honorable’.

Now, the ritual suicide is intervened by British government. In his author note, Soyinka warns against seeing it as a ‘clash of cultures’. I think I can understand his frustration. It is also not intended to be anti-colonial – ‘the colonial factor’ he says is only incidental.

Although he does seem to be trying to silence, in advance, any judgments from cross-cultural readings:

n  
n   “Of course you have also mastered the art of calling things by names which don't remotely describe them.”n  
n

Again, when colonial officer’s wife calls the ritual feudalistic, Olunde (Elesin’s son) points to her the parties of British royal classes when war is on.

n  
n   “Don't forget I was attached to hospitals all the time. Hordes of your wounded passed through those wards. I spoke to them. I spent long evenings by their bedside while they spoke terrible truths of the realities of that war. I know now how history is made."n  
n

Also, Soyinka doesn’t want you to care about easily-imaginable officer’s dilemma –whether or not to intervene the ritual suicide. It is Elesin that is supposed to be the main character – you are supposed to understand him; understand his wish to do what he had lived all his life thinking he is duty bound to – and to do that you need a mind which has known nothing but Yoruba tradition. Everyone in the tribe, including his studying-in-European-to-be-a-doctor son, had thought him as good as dead when king died – and they thought it was right thing as well. In fact the atmosphere has a big role to play – most apparent in tribe’s emphasis on rhetoric and idoms:

n  
n  “Even a tear-veiled Eye preserves its function of sight.”
n

The power of tradition also comes out in that ending which I won’t give away, but haven’t people in all cultures struggled whenever forced to break away from traditions?

n  
n  But this young shoot has poured its sap into the parent stalk, and we know this is not the way of life. Our world is tumbling in the void of strangers, Elesin.n  
n

The logic behind it may not make sense to us but that is irrelevant, it makes sense to Elesin and that is what matters:

n  
n  “What can you offer him in place of his peace of mind, in place of the honour and veneration of his own people?n  
n

It is thus about guilt and agony of a person who has lived a honorable life – and suddenly finds himself failed to perform his duty. An undeserved life is all he is left to live whose honor wanted him dead - a left-over.

And now back to officer’s dilemma, since I can’t help it whatever Soyinka say. The officer in this case was very clear that he will interfere and nothing makes him doubt his decision – perhaps that ending did but it was too late. So, should you interfere? I don’t know. Merely the fact something can be called ‘culture’ shouldn't put it beyond criticism. I think it was a right thing for British government of India to ban Sati ritual. But that was almost always forced while in this case, Elesin is not harming anyone but himself (aside from the fact that he took a new ‘young’ wife on his last day - but that is a different issue) and so, it becomes a question of whether you are willing to allow suicide, and whether or not you are willing to allow suicide for reasons which don’t make sense or look trivial to you. That is a debate I won’t enter here.

I had to read this play for my English class, and I thought that it was very interesting. The play takes place in during British rule over much of Africa, and the whole conflict arises when the British interfere with tribal customs. Its wonderfully written, and it shows the lack of respect the colonists had over the native "inferiors". I think I just really like historical fiction plays/books lol